


reason to shine

by themorninglark



Series: tripping over time [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Birthday, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 07:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4383386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If the candles go out before I blow them -</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Then you don't get a wish, Tooru.</i>
</p><p>In which Oikawa Tooru grows up, and reaches for the brightest star in the sky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reason to shine

**Author's Note:**

> Oikawa is one of my favourite characters in the show. I've wanted to do a genfic for him for a while now, so. Here goes.
> 
> Happy birthday, Oikawa ♥
> 
> (Title: Matchbox Twenty's "The Burn")

**_He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad._ **

Raphael Sabatini, _Scaramouche_

 

 

The shelves in Oikawa Tooru's bedroom tell a story.

They are deliberate, like everything else in his life; he has curated them to the very last photo frame, angled the junior trophies so that they catch the sunrise streaming in through the window. They glitter, silver and bronze alike, a prologue to a promising future.

The Best Setter plaque does not take pride of place. It sits just a little off centre, leaving the smallest of gaps on a spotless, polished surface.

Where the brightest ray of the afternoon light falls, there is nothing but dark red cherry wood, and, sometimes, the telltale swirl of a fingerprint left behind while cleaning.

The rest of Oikawa's room is neat as a pin, and bare, but for the minimal futon on the tatami mats, the low desk with its computer and books.

It suits him fine. There is enough of the fanciful out there beyond his front door, and in his imagination.

 

 

The question that whispers, always and insistently, when he turns his face to the sun, is not: _what is the story?_

It is: _who are you telling the story to, Oikawa Tooru?_

_Who is it you are trying to convince?_

The sun is blinding in his eyes. He shields them with the flat of his hand, sweeps his hair back prettily and smiles. Here, in the inviolate secrecy of his inner sanctum, Oikawa Tooru knows.

He knows his own stark truth, knows who it is that looks upon his shelves, more than anyone else; he knows who it is whose gaze rests upon them in quiet moments, and he lets himself be blanketed in that particular vulnerability.

Just for a moment.

 

 

The sun is blinding, but he will outshine even that ethereal glow, one day.

 

* * *

 

He's always been tall, and it's his height that first catches the eye of an older kid from three doors down.

"Hey, you," says the boy. "Wanna play volleyball?"

And Oikawa nods, and says, "Okay," because in those days he has nothing better to do. (Perhaps, now, he still doesn't.)

He has never touched a volleyball in his life, and that day in the playground, he learns that, _hey_ , it's fine. It's not the end of the world, because his height will get him _some_ points, and the other boys will clap him on the back and invite him to play again.

His laugh rings out, light and airy, as he waves goodbye. His knuckles are rubbed red. They sting. He doesn't let it show.

He lingers behind, shadow growing longer across the grass when everyone else has gone; reaches down to pick up a stray ball. Tosses it once, twice, idly in his hands, throws it into the air - springs off the balls of his feet, swings his arm wildly -

Misses, and watches the ball drop like a stone.

 

 

He hears his mother's voice, drifting to him through a haze like morning dew -

_Tooru, Tooru!_

She is just there, just behind him, one hand on the knob of their back door.

She sounds so far away. Miles away.

 _One more ball,_ says Oikawa, and with his mouth set in a firm line, he tries his serve again.

 

 

And again.

And again.

 

 

He tries, because he has to, he tries, because he does not know what to do otherwise; what is there left for Oikawa Tooru, ordinary boy, if he does not -

 

 

" _Try_ ," says Iwaizumi Hajime, with a frown on his face, eyebrows furrowed.

Oikawa slumps down over the back of his chair, and lets out a long, dramatic sigh.

It is lunch time, and Oikawa has done Iwaizumi the enormous honour of rebuffing three different handmade bentos (and blushing girls) to spend the hour with him, sitting here at Iwaizumi's desk by the window; he has even offered to share some of his _tamagoyaki_ and katsu don, and really, surely, he ought to be spared the reminder of July, of the end of July, of what it means.

Of course, Iwaizumi has never spared him anything.

"Iwa- _chan_ ," he says, "it's going to be summer break _really_ soon, and after summer break, there's -"

" _Harukou_ prelims, yeah. God - Oikawa, it's _one_ day."

There's a tingling in Oikawa's palms, a strange, prickly sensation where his fingers grip his fork, like suddenly he isn't sure what he's holding, like perhaps it's not supposed to be there, like, perhaps, he should be curving his hands round leather and stitches and well-worn grooves instead.

He flexes his fingers, lets the fork fall into his bento box.

"Also, it's a Saturday," Iwaizumi adds.

"I know," says Oikawa.

Iwaizumi's steady glare never wavers. It's inconvenient, thinks Oikawa, the way things are when you let someone under your skin, and over the years, it's happened more than once. _More and more._

"So what? The weather forecast is good. I can still practice outside."

He says this, even though he knows it's not what Iwaizumi means. He is a mask of cracked plaster, of words that break apart halfway and float away on careless wings. He speaks them lightly, meaninglessly; he is young, still, and entitled to the callousness of teenhood, if only because he lets himself have so very little else of it sometimes.

Iwaizumi punctuates his sentence with his chopsticks, stabbing absently at his food.

"So." _Stab._ "Try to be." _Stab._ " _Normal._ For once. And celebrate your damned."

_Stab._

"Birthday."

"Iwa-chan," says Oikawa, raising an eyebrow, "your fishcake's going to be full of holes."

Iwaizumi scowls, and spears the whole thing into his mouth without another word.

 

* * *

 

Once, in the spring break just before high school, Iwaizumi had stood in front of the sheves in his room, cocked his head and stretched out a hand, slowly. His fingers brushed the Best Setter plaque, started to edge it towards the gap in dead centre, as if to fix the arrangement.

And Oikawa had said, sing-songing in the hollow cavern of his room, _Iwa-chan, don't do that._

Iwaizumi had thrown him a look over his shoulder, shrugged, with diffidence, dropped his arm.

_Do you know why?_

_No. But whatever, Oikawa._

_It's because -_

 

 

He is a child again, all over again, and he is in the backyard of his home with stars in the sky and a ball in the palm of his hands, heavy with the weight of everything he will become, and everything he will not.

(Though he doesn't know it yet, not then - doesn't know it for sure - but there's always been a _feeling_ of grit and gravel in the pit of his gut -)

He is a child, and his mother is standing at the back door calling his name.

She says, the candles will go out if he does not come.

His lip trembles.

_If the candles go out before I blow them -_

_Then you don't get a wish, Tooru,_ she says, and her voice lilts with warning.

 

 

Maybe, thinks Oikawa, he should have heeded it. Maybe that was the tipping point in his life.

If he had put the ball down just then - if he had dropped it, let it bounce and roll away into the gutter - if he had followed his mother back into his warmly lit house, clasped his hands tight, closed his eyes and made a wish with all his heart -

If he had only blown out the candles himself, before that last ball -

What would he have wished for?

 

 

He doesn't know, himself.

That chance is gone, like a flame on the wind. It is over now, and so, too, is his belief that birthday wishes come true because they are magic, because there is something woven into the fabric of his words on that one special day, something that touches the very threads of possibility.

No, Oikawa knows, it's nothing like that.

 

 

_Because I'm saving that spot._

He breathes this quietly, reverently. He breathes it like the finely tuned secret that it is, and even his best friend, Iwaizumi Hajime, does not hear the all of it; he regards Oikawa with that careful stare for a split second, says nothing.

And Oikawa smiles, because it _is_ unspeakable.

 

 

Saving it, for -

What is yet to come.

The victory, yet untasted; the height of who he will be, the moment he touches his apotheosis and he knows that what he holds in his hands is the light of the sun, the heart of the wind. Fragile - delicate - _impossible -_

There it is on the horizon. Luminous. Shimmering -

He'll reach out, and chase it with his own strength. Nothing more. Nothing less.

 

 

And maybe he'll never fill that empty spot in the story he tells himself, but oh - how he'll _try_ \- and that is the beginning and the end of wish-magic, the uncomplicated truth, for once.

 

* * *

 

This is how Oikawa Tooru turns sweet sixteen, in the end.

He leaves the volleyball gear in his cupboard, just for today. He goes to the mall with some of the other Seijou first-years to catch a movie, something with aliens, which makes him happy. _Happy._ It's as simple as that, sometimes; sometimes, it's as simple as freshly baked milk bread from his favourite shop, and a carton of ice-cold orange juice, won off a _jan-ken-pon_ with Matsukawa.

Oikawa almost feels sorry for him. _Almost._ Not quite. Matsukawa is just too easy to read. He scrunches up his face a certain way when he's going to throw rock.

They kick back on the kerb, the heat of the afternoon warm on their backs, and Oikawa looks up at the sky.

 _So,_ he thinks, _that's what it looks like, without a ceiling above me._

It's been so long that the clouds look unfamiliar. He expects, almost, to see floodlights and rafters, to be blinded, to hear the sound of his breathing echo, blood pounding in his ears, the spin of a ball flashing into sight. For that is what it is, for hours and hours.

There's no trickery, at the end of the day. It's not an art. What they do. What _he_ does.

He's merely an ordinary boy, grown into an ordinary high-schooler, and he _will_ outshine the sun, because he has poured his all into it; because he has sweated, shattered, pieced himself back together stronger and wilder and braver, because he has looked upon the face of this world, and laughed.

Oikawa Tooru throws his head back, leans his weight on his palms as his fingertips find new resting places. The pavement is warm, sun-baked concrete rough beneath his hands.

He smiles. The sky is blue. It is a beautiful day.

 


End file.
